Nobody needs a tablet, but many people still want a tablet. This is still the core differentiator between a 'real' computer and a tablet. At least in The Netherlands, you can't function in society without a desktop or laptop connected to the internet, so people need a computer. A tablet, though? Hence, the most common thing people have told me when they played with my iPad 2 is this: I'd love to have a tablet, but not for hundreds of euros. Enter Google's Nexus 7, the first 'cheap' tablet that doesn't just validate Android as a tablet platform, but also gives the iPad a run for its money.

Apple has more often been at the forefront of advancements than any other portable device makers. You make fun of getting rid of the floppy disk, but it IS an important detail. Sometimes having the guts of getting rid of legacy tech is almost as important getting new tech.

Don't you think that is flawed reasoning? You could say that to anything. Newton has no merit in discovering trigonometry, because someone would have figured out eventually
Being the first at doing something IS major, no matter how "trivial" you think it is many years after the fact. Apple have been trailblazing a lot of the modern tech world, and that's absolutely admirable even if one hates their politics.

Apple packages, piggybacks on the advancements of the industry at large (which just doesn't rush its tech before it can be really useful, for some pointless PR). Before doing so, Macs had major problems competing...

Apple had its head in the sand for the last many years [...] missed out [...] attitude of arrogance [...] the rest of the world passed us by [...] we need to bring the Mac up into the modern world [...] because we weren't first, because we didn't set the standards [...] this whole notion of being so proprietary in every facet what we do has really hurt us [...] reinvent the wheel our own way; and yeah it might be 10% better but usually it ended up being about 50% worse

Generally, what floppy-less iMac really did, was spawning a whole new popular category of USB floppy drives (waste of resources, money, and so on) - most people with iMacs needed one. FDD wasn't yet legacy, the move was premature, erroneous - Apple removed floppy drive, but there was still no real alternative: pendrives non-existent yet, web access fledgling.
(NVM delusions of comparing those to the accomplishments of Newton...)
If Apple, say, threw into the box a few-MiB pendrive, that would be trailblazing (or at least shipping CD-RW drive as standard)

And, as is usual, you rewrite history in Apple's favour - Amiga CDTV was probably the first consumer computer without a floppy drive, almost a decade earlier.
(and, in this case, most CDTVs naturally also had an external floppy drive...)

Overall, iMac was partly a re-purposing of the earlier (and not Apple exclusive) idea of "network computer" (and indeed, iMac G3 even reused elements of one such hw project, MacNC - that might be a major reason for its omissions, minimising R&D costs, while dressing them in nice PR). Additionally, exclusively using a new industry standard bus (USB...) was more about abandoning Mac-legacy, Mac-specific ports (ADB and such), inadequate for the realities of the market.
And WRT market forces & your...

Oh I would agree it doesn't have the same level of importance as many other things they have pushed forward. But I still think that any company being the first at throwing themselves at criticism for dropping an ubiquitous yet legacy technology is noteworthy.

But, let's not forget what glorious things accompanied that move to USB: 1) the dreadful "hockey puck" mouse 2) building into the keyboard a full USB hub ...only to give it just one port, occupied by a mouse (with the remaining hard-to-access port occupied by FDD)

PS. And about "Apple produces the devices I most enjoy using and owning" - do you ever keep in mind how enjoyment works with... human minds? (for example with positional, veblen goods, http://news-service.stanford.edu/pr/2008/pr-wine-011608.html - or go through a list of cognitive biases in general)